Apparently, the Murdochs are "all in" with Tucker Carlson’s lies, hatemongering, conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism the have driven out respected news personnel.

Media Matters caught Carlson boasting about the support he gets from Fox News:

CARLSON: You hate to suck up to your employer. I see people all the time sucking up to their employers, they work for these horrible big companies, force ‘em to read the propaganda and they do, I resent all of that. But I have to say, Fox News has gone all in in support of this. Some of the stuff that we've produced has not been popular with, like, NBC and CNN. And you would know since you deal with it, but Fox has stood behind us completely. 

JUSTIN WELLS (SENIOR EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, VP OF TUCKER CARLSON DIGITAL PRODUCTS): 100%. And there hasn't been a single time where they've told us, talk about this, don't talk about that.

CARLSON: Yeah.

[…]

CARLSON: It’s a little weird to wake up at 52 and realize you work for the last stronghold of free speech in all mass media. I did not expect that when I started working here

What F***yTucky means by “free speech” is that the Murdochs have given him a green light to spew his white nationalist rhetoric and wage his war on America without interference. And others at Fox have the “freedom” to echo him or get out. Just ask former news anchor Shepard Smith, smeared by Carlson and then pushed out for having the audacity to stand up for a colleague who said Donald Trump committed a crime trying to strongarm Ukraine into digging up dirt on a political opponent. I wonder if that was when the Kremlin began its love affair with “free speech champion” and Putinista Carlson.

Or just ask former news host Chris Wallace. He left the network not long after Lachlan Murdoch shrugged off his and other senior news personnel’s objections to Carlson’s Jan. 6th conspiracy-mongering special.

Or former contributors Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes. Carlson’s special was the last straw for the two Trump critics, but they had already been missing from prime time for years and they were reportedly set to be canceled officially when their contracts expired.

Or Chris Stirewalt. He was fired not long after he defended the network’s early, and proven correct, election-night call that Arizona went for Biden in the 2020 presidential election. It was part of a purge of “at least 16 digital editorial staffers, including senior editors,” The Daily Beast reported, “perpetrated by Porter Berry, the Sean Hannity crony now in charge of remaking Fox’s digital properties in the image of its right-wing opinion programming.”

And speaking of repeating propaganda, probably nobody told Rachel Campos-Duffy to parrot Carlson when she announced that an Elon-Musk-run Twitter would be "literally about saving civilization" but she undoubtedly knew it would please Carlson and his Carlson-admiring boss, Lachlan Murdoch.

Media Matters pointed out last May that Carlson has become the face of Fox News.

Fox has aired clips from Carlson’s shows in at least 134 weekday segments on other network programs since November 1, a roughly daily rate, according to a Media Matters review; 93 of those segments came during Fox’s purported “news” shows.

Carlson is now effectively Fox’s assignment editor. His monologues have become the jumping-off point for debate, as network hosts ask their guests to respond to his nightly rants. Clips from his show are cited as news events in their own right.

If Carlson has ever shown any respect for an opposing viewpoint, I have yet to see it. Instead, he seems intent on demonizing any dissenter. He called Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest-ranking member of the military “a pig” for promoting the study of critical race theory; He has a special obsession with smearing MSNBC host Joy Reid as the “race lady." He has said, for example, that she “took a quick break from haranguing whitey” and accused her of having “joined Team Pfizer” and having “sworn allegiance to the creepy multinational pharma-conglomerate that made it” because she contradicted him by supporting wearing face masks outside. He even berated Sen. Ted Cruz on prime time for calling the January 6th insurrection a “violent terror attack.”

In other words, Carlson’s idea of free speech is just the kind that Vladimir Putin would love: Say what you like, so long as I approve.

Oh, and Carson has proved himself a suck up, too. Back when anti-vaxx Carlson was too cowardly to say whether he had been vaccinated or not (he recently said he “skipped” the vaccines), he chickened out of commenting on the vaccine mandate of his employer by ridiculously claiming he’s “not qualified” to speak for the company. He had no such qualms when he urged an unvaccinated congresswoman to deliberately endanger First Lady Jill Biden by breathing on her in protest of the same policy at a White House event.

White nationalist demagoguery, extremism and authoritarianism are really what Carlson is selling and Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are paying him millions for it.

You can watch Carlson pose as a free speech lover below from the April 15, 2022 Tucker Carlson Tonight, via Media Matters.